CLARE full-forward Shane Brennan wasn’t initially buoyed at hearing other results in Division 4. Waterford’s draw with Tipperary did Clare no harm, while Antrim’s defeat to Wicklow leaves the Ulster county at the bottom of the basement division.
A Clare win would have been a huge boost but a point wasn’t a bad return, although the Royal College of Surgeons student wasn’t in full agreement.
“We’re never looking at the other teams’ results. We have to look at ourselves first. We set ourselves a target of winning that game. It’s heartbreaking at the moment that we didn’t but looking at it in the last minute of injury time, we could have it lost. You have to take the positives from it and the whole thing is still in our own hands,” he said.
The Clondegad man felt Clare could have utilised the first-half breeze to more telling effect.
“We probably should have a few more scores got in the first half. On another day, we might have had a goal chance but it just didn’t come for us today. The great thing to take from it is the heart that we did show in the second half. There were lads fighting back for ball. You could see that lads were getting tired but they were still going for it. It’s very disappointing then when you don’t get the two points from it but we fought very hard in the second half,” Brennan maintained.
He believes the 2014 Clare senior football panel will not wilt in adversity.
“At half-time, when things weren’t looking that good, on another day we’d have folded then and things would have started to go wrong. We showed at the start of the second half how we’re different this year and there’s a different attitude. In the last few minutes, when we really needed it, we stepped it up. We have to take those things from it,” he suggested.
Brennan had a good first half at wing-forward against Waterford in Dungarvan but was moved to full-forward last Sunday, with David Tubridy absent due to a hamstring injury.
“I’m just happy to be playing wherever they put me. If that’s full-forward or full-back, I’ll do it. If they want me to do it again, I’ve no problem. It’s something different and there’s a lot of running that ‘oul’ wing-forward job,” the younger of the Brennan brothers joked.
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.